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Marvin Newman

Let’s do some photography today, shall we? I don’t know the title of this photo, if it even has one, but it was taken by Marvin Newman. The scene is of adults washing children and readying them for bed at a kibbutz. I scanned this from one of the books in a Time-Life series called Human Behavior. I found several of the books at a yard sale years ago and picked them up for a dollar a piece, if I remember correctly. It’s an old series with some outdated information, but it was certainly worth a buck a piece just for the photographs alone.

From Ron on July 26, 2012
I know this point has been made in many other places, but isn’t it funny how nudity is acceptable when it is in the name of anthropology? The insidious implication being that such people are a lower form of human and are not entitled to the same respect and dignity as “civilized” people.

From pipstarr72 on July 26, 2012
Yeah, and this is how Victorian photographers frequently got around the censors–they focused their cameras on indigenous peoples and cultures that recalled the classical era, classical art being very popular in their time.

4 thoughts on “Marvin Newman”

Some people are okay with full-frontal adult male nudity in a National Geographic special but the same people freak out at the glimpse of a 5yo white girl’s nipple. Who are the ones sexualizing children? In my opinion, it is those puritanical people. Their racism shows through as well because they they are unable to see that the remote tribal groups are real human beings.

Yeah, it really is pretty obvious that people are reacting to their own insecurities about children. Which suggests they should have more exposure rather than less to nude children, to become desensitized to it. I think rest of the modern world is pretty much way past that; it’s mostly the Anglosphere where adults can’t handle seeing nude kids without freaking out.